Right To Die

"Crystalline. "

"I'm sorry." She leaned her head back. "You're not stupid either. I know that. Will the police be much help?"

"You've met Neely."

"Yes, but aren't there any other police?"

"Bluntly, not until our friend comes closer."

"As he suggested in the note."

"Yes."

"Well, it will be a while before he has another chance."

"What do you mean?"

"We'll be going to New York tomorrow. I'm conferring with the new National Council on Death and Dying."

"Professor – "

"That's the successor organization to Concern for Dying and the Society for the Right to Die. Then it's on to D.C. for a few days of lobbying before we fly back to the coast."

"When you say 'we'…?"

Andrus set her expression firmly. "Tuck, Manolo, and I."

"Professor – "

"Please stay in touch with Inés." She softened just a little. "I had to cancel Alec tonight, too, though I'm going to try to see him early tomorrow. Please do whatever you can to help."

I said, "I will," no longer knowing who Andrus meant for me to help. Or how.

***

"Hey, John! John-boy, how you doing?"

I was almost at the corner of Charles and Beacon. Tucker Hebert waved to me from half a block away. He tried to pick up his pace, skittering down the sidewalk with mincing steps, like a hockey coach in street shoes crossing the rink.

Despite the crisp wind, a heavy dose of eau de Dewar's rolled toward me. "I never will get the hang of skating around up here. Didn't get this ice stuff more than once a decade where I come from."

Hebert must have seen something in my face. "John, I hope you're not still put out about that phone call thing, but like I said back then, Maisy needed the rest more – "

"I'm not upset about the phone call."

The eyes swam in a glassy sea. "What's in your craw, then?"

"Somebody shot at us tonight."

Hebert tipped forward on his toes and lost his footing. Going down, he grabbed for my arm just as I grabbed for his and steadied him.

"Shots? At the lecture?"

I would have asked first if anybody was hurt. "We never got that far. It happened in front of the house."

"God almighty! I never would have – Lordy! Maisy, John." Hebert's fingers nearly pierced my coat sleeve. "Maisy, is she okay?"

"Yes. Nobody was hit."

"Oh, God. Thank – "

"Of course, the shooter wasn't trying to hit us."

Hebert opened his mouth, but no words came out. I said, "The slugs went way high. Just a warning."

"Warning?"

"Yeah."

"Of what?"

"Good question. You finish your errands?"

"Huh?"

"Your errands. Maisy said you were doing errands."

"Oh. Oh, yeah. Well, truth is, I was just out having a few snorts. All this time in San Diego, I've been kind of missing some of the places around here."

"Any places in particular?"

"No. No, just here and there. You know how it is."

"The police may be calling you on that."

"On what?"

"On where you were this afternoon and tonight."

"The police? Lordy. Maisy, she's… at the house?"

"Right."

Hebert let go of my arm and took off for the mews. He slipped three times and went down once before making the corner.

25

I SKIPPED RUNNING THE MORNING AFTER THE SHOTS WERE FIRED, instead calling Inés Roja, who said she was feeling much better. Andrus, Hebert, and Manolo had left the house and the city safe and sound. It took Roja just a few minutes to dig up the only home address I didn't already have, although I decided to save that one for last.

***

The condominium complex abutted the sea, a cluster of structures four stories high with weathered shingles. I found a parking spot on the street, not even diehard sailors thinking about braving the waters on Marblehead in February.

I went through the foyers in live buildings before I found "Cuervo, R." on a mailbox behind an unlocked entry door. I climbed two flights to the third floor, Cuervo seeming to have a duplex condo that included the fourth.

I could hear a stereo set low on a jazz tape. I knocked, got nothing, knocked again, and heard the slap of shower thongs on a hard surface. The door opened, and Cuervo, barechested in tennis shorts, looked out at me.

"What are you doing here?"

"I'd like to talk with you, Mr. Cuervo."

"Ray, please. I thought we had a talk already?"

"Something else came up."

"I'm, uh, entertaining." He sent his eyebrows toward the interior staircase behind him. "Can't it wait?"

"I'm afraid not. Somebody took a shot at your stepmother yesterday."

"Somebody… you mean with a gun?"

"That's right."

"Dios mia! Come in, come in."

Cuervo's living room had a view of the harbor through a glass wall, French doors leading to a wooden deck. He waved at the sectional furniture around an elaborate home entertainment center that dominated one of the other walls. "Sit down. I'll be right back."

Cuervo took the stairs two at a time. I heard just vague voices, then a door opening and closing. Cuervo came back down, pulling a rugby shirt over his head, the collar of the shirt uneven.

I said, "I'm sorry to be interrupting anything."

"That's okay. Her night was just about up anyway."

A shoe hit the floor upstairs, and Cuervo got serious. "So what's this about Maisy'?"

I went through it for him.

Cuervo raked his hair with his left hand. "Unbelievable. I can't believe none of you got hurt."

"The shooter wasn't trying to hit us."

"How do you know?"

"I know. The question is, do you have any idea who it could have been?”

"Me? How would I know anything about it?"

"You told me you and your father used to go hunting."

"Sure, we… Oh, come on, man. You're thinking I had something to do with this?"

"That's right."

"Hey, lots of kids go hunting with their fathers. Doesn't mean I'd – look, I don't have any reason to shoot Maisy."

"Any reason to scare her?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You said last time that you didn't care about the split on your father's estate."

"That's right. She got the house in Candas, I got the liquid stuff."

"Any nonfinancial reason for getting back at her?"

"Like what?"

"Like sexual?"

Cuervo hurled himself from the sectional piece. I rolled to the left, felt him land, then rolled back, clamping my arms around his. I pushed his face into the cushion for about ten seconds, then let up enough to hear him say "Okay, okay. Let me go."

I stood up and over Cuervo as he turned back to me. He kneaded his left bicep with his right hand, then switched off to the other arm. I said, "Just what exactly happened between you and Maisy Andrus?"

Cuervo cocked an ear toward upstairs before speaking in a low voice. "I was maybe fourteen, fifteen. After my mother died, I was pretty used to having the run of the house in Candés, you know? I mean, it was just my father, Manolo, and me when I was home from school. Well, one day I was coming back after going to the beach, and I was dripping wet on the tile floor near the staircase. So I stripped down as I was climbing the steps, hurrying so the water wouldn't get all over the rugs upstairs.

"I kind of burst into the bathroom, naked, and there's… there's Maisy. Naked, too, just stepping out of a bath. I was stunned, I guess. Then Maisy looked down at me" – Cuervo dropped his eyes to the crotch of his tennis shorts – "and she said, 'Ramon, you're your father's son,' and smiled. Looking back on it, I guess she meant it to cut the embarrassment, but at the time I took it… I took it for my father's marrying a whore, okay? A whore who'd make a play for her new husband's son."